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Lunch with the FT

For over 25 years, Lunch with the FT has delighted and fascinated Financial Times readers. The question I’m often asked is how we choose our interviewees, and whether there’s a formula for Lunch. There are indeed a few rules: Lunch requires engaging characters relevant to our global readership; we insist on fine writing, and fine dining, though there have been a few cases of hamburgers and beers.

Unlike a straight interview, Lunch must be about the experience as much as the dining companion. It’s a conversation, casual yet serious, pleasant yet candid. Two of the new entries for this edition, the billionaire Bernard Arnault and the exiled Afghan mayor Zarifa Ghari beautifully exemplify this. I’ve written my share of Lunches over the years, including with two chief UK spies, but the most memorable was lunch with Elon Musk. We drove, in a Tesla of course, to his favourite Mexican restaurant in Austin and, over slow-cooked lamb and chillies, he told me why he plays the fool on Twitter and believes he can colonize Mars.

We’re publishing a new edition of Lunch with the FT to mark our 135th anniversary and to celebrate our successful transition to a global digital news organization with more than 1.3 million subscribers. We’ve now returned to our old home at Bracken House, across the street from St Paul’s Cathedral, and in the heart of the City of London, where we belong.

Innovation remains our priority, and we continue to grow our data and visual journalism. But there will always be constants that define our original, quality journalism. None are as appetizing as Lunch with the FT .

Roula Khalaf Editor of the Financial Times

about the editor

Lionel Barber was editor of the FT for 15 years, assuming the post in 2005 after serving in Washington, Brussels and New York as a foreign correspondent and senior editor, and stepping down in 2020. He has lectured widely on US foreign policy and Europe, and he has interviewed many world leaders. He is chairman of the Tate and a member of the board of Trustees of Carnegie Corporation.

Lunch with the FT A Second Helping

Edited by Lionel Barber

Foreword by Alec Russell

Illustrations by James Ferguson

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‘Wait, what happened to our salmon?’

‘You can’t walk down the street without thinking about things that men generally don’t have to think about’

‘I was selling this shitty product and it embarrassed me’

stars of page, stage and screen

‘I’m becoming a bit of a recluse. I like solitude. I like silence’

– David

‘A

‘You

‘A general sentiment is that if you’re rich you’re evil’

Foreword

One of the great privileges of being editor of FT Weekend is receiving the weekly reader mailbag. Every weekend in come the emails – and letters too – from around the world commending, questioning and sometimes excoriating anything from our choice of front-page picture to our ballet coverage. Our readers have varied tastes and interests but if there is one feature that unites their fascination, it is Lunch with the FT .

Lunch was dreamed up in 1994 by Max Wilkinson, an idiosyncratic predecessor of mine whom I recall with trepidation and admiration as an editor. The interview has been running every Saturday since without pause – and with the same formula: the guest chooses the destination and the FT pays. This has led to some headaches for our managing editor who has to juggle the FT ’s budget (see ‘The Art of Expenses’ by Henry Mance on p. xiii).

A few years ago David Pilling, our Africa editor and one of our outstanding regular Lunch interviewers, went to settle up after lunch with the South African populist Julius Malema and found he was paying for the firebrand’s five-strong security detail. In June 2015 the loudmouth British newspaper tycoon Richard Desmond was more brazen still. As my colleague Mance wrote: ‘ “We’ll have that one,” Desmond says, before I can intervene. As the sommelier skips away, the sum of £580 lingers on my retina. So this, I think, is how it feels to be screwed by Richard Desmond. It took less than 10 minutes.’ In 2017 Mance won the Interviewer of the Year award in the British Press Awards. One of his entries was another bibulous lunch – and with another loudmouth, Nigel Farage. The bar bill encompassed six pints, a bottle of wine and two glasses of port . . . Alcohol is not essential of course for a good lunch; we appreciate that the art of lunching has changed in recent years. But if my correspondence with readers is anything to go by, they groan when too many lunches in succession unspool over mineral water or Diet Coke.

When would-be interviewers ask me for the critical ingredient for a ‘good Lunch’ I reply ‘electricity’. The only thing that really matters is that it has to be an arresting conversation.

Scoundrels tend more easily to deliver more ‘electric’ copy. Filleting or roasting them can be more readily absorbing than the probing of, say, a literary legend. But it’s not that we only interview scoundrels, far from it. This selection includes mesmerizing encounters with the wonderful writer Edna O’Brien and the madcap football philosopher Eric Cantona. We also include a lunch with an inspiring junior citizen, Bana al-Abed, the Syrian girl who became known as the ‘Face of Aleppo’ during the city’s siege by government forces. There are plenty of people we would not lunch. There is always a risk you will provide a platform for a charlatan or crook. I hesitated before agreeing to fly to Harare to have lunch with ‘the Crocodile’, Zimbabwe’s new president, in January 2018 but then concluded that the chance of a scoop with his first interview since he succeeded Robert Mugabe was too tempting.

At the annual FT Weekend festival in London, I asked for a show of hands from a boisterous crowd about our philosophy for choosing Lunch guests. Readers had come from as far as Berlin, Singapore and New York. What did they think of lunching sleazebags? Briefly I worried that an age of earnestness might have taken hold. But no. The near-unanimous answer was yes to sleazebags!

We have now lunched well over 1,000 people. There were tough choices for the final selection for this line-up. Of political titans, Jean- Claude Juncker made the cut, sharing, yes, wine as well as lunch with the FT ’s Editor, Lionel Barber. Of the thinkers and millennials shaping our world, we have the brilliant Demis Hassabis and Whitney Wolfe. Our sybaritic lunchers are represented by Isabelle Huppert and Carlo Ancelotti.

Timing with Lunch, as with all journalism, is everything. Donald Trump’s encounter with the FT ’s former deputy editor Martin Dickson in 2013, three years before his election as US president, is riveting and revealing in equal measure – and after publication led to a gloriously testy exchange with his office. So, too, our Lunch with Sheryl Sandberg is worth a second read now, in light of the fresh controversies raging over Facebook.

Among the considerations when I meet my colleagues to finalize the week’s Lunch is our global range. In these pages you will meet the North Korean refugee Hyeonseo Lee. You will encounter Edward Snowden,

hidden away in a Moscow hotel room. You will go to a scruffy San Francisco flat to have takeaway Thai with the then 23-year-old billionaire Vitalik Buterin, founder of the Ethereum cryptocurrency. Chloe Cornish, also in her early twenties, an FT graduate, asked him about everything from the bitcoin bubble and his homeland Russia to his quest for eternal life. It is a kaleidoscopic cast, reflecting the eclecticism of our journalism and the interests of our readers.

Accompanying almost all of these Lunches are the illustrations by the brilliant James Ferguson (see page xv). I have lost count of the number of times readers have asked if he too is allowed to eat! Finally I would like to thank my colleague Natalie Whittle who has overseen this second volume with her customary clarity, determination and wit.

Alec Russell FT Weekend Editor, 2016–2023

The Art of Expenses

By Henry Mance

Yes, I got screwed. I took British media baron Richard Desmond out for lunch, and he ordered a £580 bottle of Bordeaux. The tip on the wine alone was £72. I sat shell-shocked through the rest of the meal, which was probably Desmond’s intention. It was my first ever Lunch with the FT , and I was certain it would be my last. I waited weeks before breaking the news to my editors. They were sympathetic; the FT ’s expenses system was not, and blocked my initial request for repayment.

Some guests, however, object to the FT picking up the tab. ‘Usually, we just leave, right?’ exclaimed Donald Trump, after a 2013 lunch at the Trump Grill. He did allow the FT to pay, but motor-racing billionaire Bernie Ecclestone did not. ‘I never stopped breaking the rules,’ Ecclestone said, unfurling £50 notes to settle the bill at London’s Mandarin Oriental. This brings its own form of embarrassment for the journalist. It’s another way for the guest to assert themselves: success breeds largesse.

Canny guests sometimes seek to disguise their power. Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg chose to eat at a standard Mexican restaurant on the tech company’s campus; Spotify’s Daniel Ek settled for a sandwich on New York’s High Line. But if they think FT journalists are impressed by simplicity, I have bad news. We can have a sandwich any day. Expensive lunches tend to make good interviews. The humility tactic only works if it reflects the guest’s actual habits. The beauty of interviewing someone over food is that you can quickly sniff out inauthenticity.

Not all the FT ’s interviewees are people for whom you would normally reach into your pocket – I’m thinking of figures such as Martin Shkreli, the pharmaceutical price-gouger. Journalists – and readers – are forgiven for thinking: why are we helping this person become even richer?

xiv THE ART OF EXPENSES

On other occasions, it’s a pleasure to pay the bill, because the guest has given so much in return. The actor Isabelle Huppert ate 12 courses over three-and-a-half hours at L’Arpège, the Michelin-starred Paris restaurant. Who cares that it cost £412?

Or take BBC ’s Alan Yentob, who joined me for Lunch at London’s River Café. The restaurant is practically his second home, and revealed his character. (Although I could have done without him insisting that I buy the in-house cookbook: I knew the FT expenses system would really draw a line there.)

As for Desmond, I have seen him occasionally since we shared that wine. He never fails to argue that the FT ’s most expensive lunch to date was all a misunderstanding, and that he had offered to pick up the tab. That is not how I remember it. And I have the tape.

A Note on the Illustrator

James Ferguson is the third guest at every Lunch with the FT . Our veteran staff illustrator has been painting egos, icons and rogues on to sheets of cotton paper for Lunch with the FT since 2004.

The routine is the same for presidents, financiers and Hollywood stars: the reporter takes a picture of their guest at the lunch table, which Ferguson then works up on paper, after a close read of the interview for clues on character. There is ‘no secret’, he says, to his weekly task. ‘Just observe and interpret.’ The beauty of the subject can make the job tougher, however. The hardest person to draw in this collection, Ferguson says, was the luminous Gwyneth Paltrow.

Ferguson describes himself as an ‘artodidact’; he did not study fine art formally, he was simply ‘good at drawing’. Quality paint and paper are important to the end result, but he is liberal with his materials: ‘I use anything. Watercolours, gouache, acrylics, inks, crayons, knives [to distress the paint].’

All this work takes place silently at his FT desk, until the deadline looms and the illustration needs to be handed to the designer. Which is when a sound familiar in the office ignites: the ‘Ferguson hairdryer’, giving a blast of hot air to dry off the famous faces. Lunch with the FT would be half the meal without him.

Natalie Whittle

Power and Politics

‘I have met two big destroyers: Gorbachev and Cameron’

Jean-Claude Juncker ‘I have met two big destroyers: Gorbachev and Cameron’

By Lionel Barber

Four black-and-white photographs line one wall in the private dining room of the president of the European Commission.

Each pays homage to past office-holders: Roy Jenkins, Labour party reformer and grand gourmand ; Gaston Thorn, plucky Luxembourger; and Jacques Delors, the French philosopher king who helped to build the single market and the euro.

The fourth picture catches the eye. The year is 1966. Walter Hallstein, German law professor, diplomat and first Commission president, is entertaining President Habib Bourguiba of Tunisia. Here is a snapshot of the original, intimate club of Six in the European Economic Community. Today’s sprawling, squabbling European Union of 28 members, soon to be 27 with the departure of the British, seems a world apart.

This week marks the 60th anniversary of the founding Treaty of Rome. The clinking of champagne glasses will be muted. Europe remains battered by low growth and high unemployment, a migration wave from the Middle East and north Africa, not to mention Brexit and Donald Trump. If Jean- Claude Juncker is feeling depressed, he masks it well. The current president of the European Commission, another Luxembourger in the top job, has agreed to have lunch to mark the Rome anniversary. He arrives on time at 12.30pm, all smiles behind a sober dark suit, white shirt and dashing pink tie.

‘How come it has been so long?’ he says in French, embracing me warmly. It’s been 15 years since we last met. Back in the 1990s, when I was the FT ’s bureau chief in Brussels. Juncker was his country’s prime

Illustration by James Ferguson

minister, a mini power broker between France and Germany, and a trusted source.

At 62, he has been near the centre of power for more than three decades, present at the creation of the modern EU. Today, he is the last man standing.

‘I’ve been elected 14 times in my life, nine times to the Luxembourg parliament, four times to the European Parliament,’ he says, omitting the last controversial vote when ‘Buggins’s turn’ dictated he was the centre-right’s candidate for the Commission job. ‘Being described as a stupid bureaucrat with no link to representative democracy is difficult to take. We are not in an iron tower.’

As we take our place at a pristine dining table set for two, I begin with a few short sharp questions: What went wrong with Europe? Was enlargement a mistake? What about the original mission, to exorcise the demons of nationalism and war?

Juncker says enlargement was an inevitable consequence of the end of the cold war. More than 20 new countries took their place on the European map. Border conflicts posed a huge risk. Yet he admits the message of war and peace no longer resonates with the younger generation.

‘I [also] explain Europe with a future perspective . . . we are losing weight economically and demographically even if we think we are still masters of the world. By the end of this century, we will be 4 per cent of Europeans out of 10 billion people. This is not the time for new divisions. We have to stick together.’

The president sips from a glass of wine, a crispy white from Languedoc. ‘My father was a steelworker and he told me about a new beginning in Europe [in the 1950s]. He had been forced to join the German army, along with three of his brothers. That was a terrible period in the lives of my father and uncles, which impressed me for the rest of my life.’

His father was wounded in Odessa on the eastern front and taken prisoner by the Russians. During the Brexit referendum campaign, British tabloids reported that his father was a Nazi, a slur that deeply upset the president and his father, who passed away shortly afterwards. ‘It was unjust and disgusting,’ says Juncker, ‘even [Nigel] Farage [leader of U kip] apologized.’

Now in the twilight of his career, Juncker has been criticized as

low-energy, a relic of a bygone era who delegates too much to Martin Selmayr, his Machiavellian chief of staff, and who spends too little time in the ‘newcomer’ member states in central and eastern Europe. (‘I accept this,’ he says of the last point.)

Over a two-hour conversation, he is determined to show he is on top of his brief, rattling off statistics ranging from the minimum wage in Bulgaria to the declining number of telephone kiosks in Germany, all delivered effortlessly in English, French and occasionally German. Food is a tiresome distraction. The president barely touches his starter, a tasty if stringy Carpaccio de Saint-Jacques in sesame and soya oil.

A waitress arrives with a bottle of red wine, a 2005 Pomerol. ‘No, no,’ says the president, waving away the claret. ‘I cannot mix white and red. We will have major events.’

The president’s weakness for alcohol is well known. Today, he is on best behaviour. I ask him how he survived all those late-night councils. By his account, the worst was a budget meeting in Brussels in late 1985 ahead of Spain and Portugal joining the EU.

‘I was chairing the meeting. It started on Monday morning at 11am and finished on Thursday at 11pm, without going to the hotel, without having a shower. They [still] sent me the bill.’

‘So what’s the secret of getting through the all-night sittings?’ I ask.

‘Coffee and water.’

‘You can’t be serious.’

‘No whisky, nothing of that kind.’

‘No brandy?’

‘No, no, no.’

With one eye on Brexit, I ask the president to name the most brutal negotiations he was involved in.

‘Greece continuing to be a member of the euro,’ he shoots back.

Between 2004 and 2013, Juncker was on another Brussels jobs merry-go-round, chairing the Eurogroup, which by 2011 comprised 17 members. ‘I had to be supportive of Greece because no one else was. I had to take in my compromise . . . and I had to tell the third group [the Slovaks and Slovenes]: “I will no longer listen to you because you are not in the right mood.” Those were really difficult moments.’

In 2015, the same drama played out, this time with the new Greek government led by Alexis Tsipras, the radical left-winger. By now Juncker was

Commission president and keen to cut a deal on Greek debt restructuring. ‘It took a moment to convince him I was partly on his side. All this was very difficult because the Commission was not really in charge; it was the Eurogroup. We were taking all the initiatives. And the Germans and others were saying: “What are you doing there? This is not your job.” ’

Juncker has irked member states by insisting he is running a ‘political’ Commission not a bureaucracy. They fear a power grab but the president has a point: the Brussels-based executive has the right of legislative initiative, it enforces the rules, it keeps the show on the road.

I first witnessed Juncker in action in Dublin Castle in 1996 when he helped to broker a deal over the German- inspired Stability Pact to enforce budgetary discipline in the future eurozone.

‘Chirac started the meeting by saying the pact was an invention of German bureaucrats, pointing very directly at Theo Waigel, then finance minister, who refused to speak to Chirac. It was the very first time I played a role at head of state level. And when I could say to myself: without me, it would have been a collapse.’

Helmut Kohl was even more influential. Juncker describes the German chancellor as ‘a modest giant, a little saint in a great church’ who understood the ‘secret psychology’ of making the smaller countries feel he was listening. ‘When everything went wrong, he would say: “Listen, friends, I am going to be strongly attacked in Germany. But it does not matter; I am doing this for European reasons. I am not playing the national card; I am playing now the European card. Please do the same. Today and next time.” That happened three or four times. And the others were in fact ashamed.’

The waitress brings more Pomerol to wash down the veal fillet that is tender, if a little overcooked. By now, Juncker is dropping his diplomatic mask. France’s inability to stick to budget discipline was a big problem and ‘it still is’. Those who believe the Dutch elections show populism has peaked are wrong. ‘Fruchtbar ist der Schoss [the womb is still fertile],’ he says, citing Brecht’s warning about fascism returning to Europe in the 1950s.

Can Marine Le Pen win the French presidential election?

‘I don’t think so . . . I cannot imagine the whole of France shifting to the extreme right. But they have a solid Sockel [pillar] of support.’

I suggest the danger lies in the collapse of the traditional centre-left

and centre- right parties. Juncker agrees: ‘That is the problem of France . . . the French are not used to coalitions. They hate each other.’

By contrast, post-war Germany has a different political tradition. ‘The German system was never driven by extremists, whereas the French system was driven by communist extremists and now by the extreme right . . . the best thing to happen in France would be bridging these abnormally huge differences. Will it happen? I don’t know.’

This hints at a preference for Emmanuel Macron, the centrist newcomer with no party, but Juncker says he has no intention of meddling.

The coffee and chocolates arrive. It is time to tackle Brexit, which he describes as ‘a tragedy, and people do not know that this tragedy will lead to conclusions’.

Before last year’s referendum the then UK prime minister, David Cameron, and his close ally and then chancellor of the exchequer, George Osborne, were desperate to appease Tory hardliners. ‘Cameron always said: “I have one major problem. If Theresa May [the then home secretary who succeeded him as prime minister after Britain voted last June to leave the EU ] publicly says that she is for Brexit, then we are lost.” ’

Juncker describes May as a Brexiter and predicts Cameron will not be judged kindly by history. ‘I have met in my life two big destroyers: Gorbachev, who destroyed the Soviet Union, and Cameron, who destroyed the United Kingdom to some extent, even if there is no wave of Scotland to become independent.’

The exit bill for the UK will be at least €60 billion and Britain’s departure will also change the balance of power in Europe, says Juncker. The UK always defended new members from central and eastern Europe. Germany cannot replace the British nor can it supplant Britain’s role in the transatlantic relationship.

Juncker is visibly agitated about President Donald Trump’s delight in Brexit. When US vice-president Mike Pence paid a recent visit to Brussels, he did not mince words. ‘I told him: “Do not invite others to leave, because if the EU collapses, you will have another war in the western Balkans.” The only possibility for this tortured part of Europe is to have a European perspective. If we leave them to themselves – Bosnia and Herzegovina, Republika Srpska, Macedonia, Albania, all of these countries – we will have a war again.’

Will Trump galvanize Europe to be more united? Juncker is cautious. Trump has made Europeans think twice about American intentions, especially given the ‘very serious, though overestimated’ threat from Russia. ‘When it comes to security, Trump is pushing them more and more in the direction of European integration.’

With two-and-a-half more years left in his five-year term, Juncker knows that any new political initiative must await the outcome of this September’s German election. Still, the president does hint that there may be moves in 2018 to a more formalized ‘multi- speed’ Europe where, say, a euro core group moves ahead with greater integration. He rejects the notion of a new ‘Iron Curtain’, which segregates the ‘newcomers’, the slightly ambivalent term he repeatedly uses to categorize the central and east Europeans.

He also condemns the idea of a united federal Europe built against the nation states. ‘Forgetting the importance of national landscapes, cultures, national behaviours, reactions and reflexes is a big, big mistake. I am against nationalists, but I am very much in favour of patriots.’

As we sip our coffee, I remind Juncker that he once said that power had an erotic quality. After 35 years of Euro-building, does he still find power erotic?

‘I find it more and more exciting and less and less erotic.’

How so?

European Commission

Berlaymont, Rue de la Loi 200, 1049 Brussels

Carpaccio de Saint-Jacques

Noisette de filet de veau

Crêpe caramélisée à l’orange

Moka et mignardises

Mas Champart

Château L’Hospitalet de Gazin, Pomerol

Total – Complimentary

‘You are enthusiastic because the challenges are there and because you are part of a system trying to give a response. But after several years you stop being irrational. Eroticism is irrational; explicable but irrational. Why are you in love with a person? The day you know means that you have stopped being in love.’

But surely there is always room for intuition, whether in love or politics?

‘Yes,’ says the president, ‘these are the fucking moments.’

Whether this refers to a Euro summit or something else is left unsaid. We adjourn to the president’s spacious office down the hall. He is a ferocious reader (especially newspapers, much to the frustration of his staff). He tells me he is thinking in retirement of writing a history of the euro, based on 50 metres of original documents he has accumulated since 1986.

And he has one more story to tell.

Back in the early 1990s, when European monetary union was still a distant prospect, the Luxembourg government secretly ordered the printing of a new national currency, 50 billion new notes as an insurance policy. The Grand Duchy was part of a monetary union with Belgium but clearly did not have full confidence in the Belgians staying the course to the single European currency. On the launch of the euro on 1 January 1999 Juncker had the notes destroyed, keeping one for himself and the other for the Grand Duke.

The president chuckles, checks his watch and rises from his chair. We walk out of his office, past photographs of all the Commission presidents, ending with José Manuel Barroso of Portugal. There is one last space for Juncker’s own portrait, next to a large exit door.

Après lui, le déluge? Let’s hope not.

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf

‘The integrity issue is systemic’

By David Pilling

Ma Ellen is not happy. Then again she is not exactly angry, either. She looks at me sternly from behind her spectacles with a glint of weary amusement. ‘You’re meddlin’ now,’ she says, in what sounds like a southern American drawl. ‘I’m meddling? Is that what you said?’ I ask, checking that I’ve heard correctly. ‘Yes,’ she says, as though that settles it.

We’re not in the Deep South, though the ornate furnishings, homecooked food and her rich, lilting accent might suggest otherwise. We’re in Liberia, the west African country founded by emancipated slaves from America. My guest is the president, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf – ‘Ma Ellen’ to many Liberians – the first woman to be elected head of state in Africa when she took over 11 years ago, and, at 77, a dogged survivor of her country’s brutal past.

The subject of my meddling is the coup of 1980, when Samuel Doe, a master sergeant in the army, overthrew the government of William R. Tolbert to become Liberia’s first indigenous leader. Since it was first settled by African-Americans in 1822, Liberia had been run by and for Americo-Liberians, the elite that traced its ancestry back to the US . It was rumoured that Doe’s soldiers, venting pent-up anger at years of exploitation, gouged out Tolbert’s right eye and disembowelled him.

Thirteen members of the government were subsequently taken to the beach, where the rough grey waters of the Atlantic pound against the African coast. There, they were summarily shot before jeering crowds. Sirleaf was finance minister at the time and one of only four cabinet members to be spared. My question is: where was she that night?

‘There’s no big secret. I was at a private home with a friend. People were listening to gunfire and passing the news around.’ Did she fear for her

Illustration by James Ferguson

life? ‘I had concerns,’ she says matter-of-factly. ‘I was called in [by Doe] and, in the end, I was protected.’ And you served briefly in his administration, I prompt. ‘Yes, if you say president of the Liberian Bank, that’s correct.’

The events of 1980 were the start of Liberia’s descent into a murderous hell, first under Doe himself and then, in the 1990s and early 2000s, under Charles Taylor, the warlord who overthrew Doe and plunged the country into civil war. During this time, Sirleaf spent long periods abroad, but never abandoned her political ambitions. In 2005 she was finally elected president, in a contest overseen by US peacekeepers brought in to help enforce a ceasefire and re-establish democratic rule.

‘We’ve done a lot to restore Liberia’s credibility, Liberia’s reputation, Liberia’s presence,’ she says of her presidency, the commas almost audible. Certainly abroad, the Harvard-educated, former United Nations technocrat is seen as a near miracle worker who has brought stability to her impoverished, war-ravaged country. Until 2014’s catastrophic Ebola outbreak, the country’s GDP was growing at an average of 8 per cent a year, and in 2011 Sirleaf was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. At home, her image is of an ‘iron lady’ who has – literally and figuratively – dodged several bullets on her way to the top.

When I suggest that she is less popular in Liberia than in Washington or London, she points out that she has been elected twice. ‘History will challenge that. I’m not talking about what you hear from 5 per cent of the population on the radio, in the papers,’ she says. ‘I don’t pay attention to it. I travel around the country. I’m happy I have a good relationship with the people.’

We’re in the long, private dining room of a restaurant in the Congo Town part of Monrovia, the scrappy capital scythed out of malarial jungle in the 19th century. On a side table are several local specialities including pepper soup with pig’s feet, fufu (cassava flour pounded into a smooth paste) and ‘check rice’, which is ‘beautified’ with okra. There are dishes with meats, as well as vegetables including ‘bennie’ sesame seeds, ‘parched in a skillet and pounded’, according to one of Sirleaf’s assistants.

I’m seated next to Sirleaf at the head table, which is laid with a regally red tablecloth and set with ornate gold-coloured underplates. She is dressed in a deep-blue headscarf, a striped jacket of local fabric and a

long scarf decorated with the Liberian flag, a derivative of the Stars and Stripes.

Flanking us at the top table are the president’s press secretary and information minister. Perpendicular is a long table with 18 chairs, at which are sat a smattering of aides and officials, also eating. Behind them are photographers and pen-pushers. Rather than an intimate lunch, it feels like we’re being ogled by whispering courtiers.

I concentrate on Sirleaf. She is eating fufu and bitter leaf, a green vegetable commonly served in west Africa. It’s the first time that I’ve seen anyone eat the former, a white sticky paste normally rolled into balls with one’s fingers, with a knife and fork. No one had asked my preference, but I have been served the green-tinged check rice with a spicy curry sauce containing fish and the most succulent of shrimp. While Sirleaf is talking in her deliberate style, I busy myself prising off the translucent orange shells, popping the flesh into my mouth. ‘I’m glad you like it,’ she says when I signal my appreciation. ‘Those are river shrimps. They’re good.’

We’re still discussing the past. The country had peculiar beginnings, I say of the freed slaves who came to Africa only to impose a form of quasi-slavery of their own. ‘Very peculiar,’ she agrees. ‘That beginning has shaped some of our values, even today. The ostentatious lifestyle. A lot of socialization. The Antebellum South.’

On her paternal side, Sirleaf’s grandmother was one of eight wives of a Gola chief. Her maternal grandmother was a market woman married to a German trader. Both women were ‘totally illiterate’, she says. As was the custom of the time, her mother and father were sent as ‘wards’ to families of the Americo-Liberian elite in Monrovia, the only plausible path out of poverty. Her father grew up to become a ‘poor man lawyer’ and, later, the first indigenous MP in Liberia’s history. Her mother was a teacher and a preacher.

‘She had an education, and my father had an education. And so they stressed education,’ says Sirleaf. Born in 1938, she was ethnically indigenous, but socially she was considered part of the lighter- skinned ruling elite who once wore top hats and tails to distinguish themselves from the locals.

‘If “Americo-Liberian” is defined as having a heritage in America, then definitely I’m not,’ she says, taking a sip of water. I had been told she

might order a beer, but she has not. Reluctantly, I join her in abstemiousness, no small sacrifice given the punishing humidity.

She was married at 17. ‘There was just a handsome young man who came [back] from the United States,’ she says wistfully, chewing on the algae-coloured bitter leaf. ‘He had come home and we met at a party. That was it. My mother was a disciplinarian. She believed that when young girls start to go out with young boys, they get married.’

The couple had four boys and moved to America, where Sirleaf began studying accounting. ‘I worked tables and did other types of things. I got back to school with determination to catch up with my former classmates and become a professional.’ Sirleaf and her husband, who turned out to be abusive, eventually divorced: ‘Of course, it puts strain on a marriage. That was to be expected,’ she says, with deliberate understatement.

After a stint in Liberia’s treasury in the early 1970s, she returned to the US , completing a masters at Harvard in public administration. By the end of the decade she was back in Liberia, where she rose to become finance minister, the position she held on the night of Doe’s coup. Five years after those traumatic events, Doe sought to legitimize his repressive administration by holding elections. Sirleaf, who had been working for the World Bank in Washington and Citibank in Nairobi, returned to run for the senate. She was twice thrown in jail, once when she objected to what she said were rigged results, and later after a failed coup attempt against Doe. Released after eight months in July 1986, she headed back to the US .

It was around this time that she made a bad mistake: she helped fund rebel leader Charles Taylor, who unleashed a violent civil conflict in which 250,000 people – one in every 10 Liberians – were killed. Because she had backed him, Sirleaf was banned from politics for 30 years by Liberia’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, although the verdict was never enforced. ‘I don’t think $10,000 is what financed the war,’ she tells me, referring to the size of her donation.

In fact, in 1997 Sirleaf lost a presidential election to Taylor, who ran on the slogan, ‘He killed my ma, he killed my pa, but I will vote for him’ – surely one of the most chilling appeals in electoral history. War raged until 2003, when Taylor fled the country. He was eventually convicted at The Hague for crimes against humanity.

I’ve made quick work of my shrimp and fancy trying the bitter leaf. While the waitress goes off to get some we talk about the 2005 presidential elections, in which Sirleaf defeated the country’s footballing idol George Weah. She took charge of a destroyed country, one virtually bereft of roads and electricity and with an army of unemployed youth. ‘We’ve done a lot to restore basic services,’ she says, adding that she negotiated successfully to write off much of the national debt and to attract investment. The country began to rebuild and to grow quickly, albeit from a desperately low base.

Yet she’s not happy. ‘We have not changed the mindset. We have not changed attitudes toward honesty, integrity, hard work. Maybe our educational system has failed us,’ she says, almost to herself. ‘I don’t know. Maybe we’ve had too much turmoil. It’s a history of boom, bust,’ she says of an economy whose fortunes have been almost entirely dependent on the vagaries of the weather and commodity prices. ‘Things are moving up. All of a sudden, boom.’ Her hand explodes over the table. ‘Something happens. Whatever it is. Boom. Then we start to climb again. Boom.’

Of late, Liberia has been knocked sideways again, this time by the collapse of rubber and iron ore prices and by the eruption of Ebola, which sent fear around the country as it felled nearly 5,000 victims. ‘When are we going to have that continuous climb that will produce enough jobs, that will reduce tensions in society?’ she laments.

Doesn’t her government bear some responsibility, I ask? After all, stories of corruption are rife. They can’t all be made up. ‘We hear it and we know it,’ she says. ‘We’ve dismissed a lot of people. People are being prosecuted now.’ But has anyone senior gone to jail? ‘Yes, people have gone to jail. There may not be a minister as yet, but people have been to jail.’

I’m eating the bitter leaf. It’s not what I had expected. Underneath the foliage are lurking dark meats, too strong for my taste. Later I read on the menu that they included cow skin and cow foot. I slurp some water to take the taste away.

‘The integrity issue is systemic,’ she says. I tell her I was stopped by police, only a few days before, at a makeshift roadblock. ‘Somebody wanted money from you,’ she snorts. ‘Integrity is a long-standing issue in this country. What contribution does deprivation make to this? What

contribution does poverty make to this? What contribution does dependency make to this?’

Isn’t Liberia itself in a permanent state of dependency, I say, pointing to its constant need for donor cash. ‘We’ve been too dependent for too long on giveaways,’ she concedes, adding that the country has been a rubber exporter for decades but has never produced a single tyre. ‘Our budget should be at a much higher level,’ she says of the tiny amount at her government’s disposal.

Suddenly she is pointing menacingly at a young waitress. ‘Do you pay taxes?’ demands the president, eliciting a nervous giggle from the startled girl.

‘You’re terrifying her,’ I say.

‘She’s smiling,’ says Sirleaf without amusement, as if to say that of course she doesn’t pay taxes. Finally, she releases the waitress from her gaze.

If she’s so down on corruption, I say, why does she not counter accusations of nepotism when it comes to her own sons, one of whom is head of national security, another the interim governor of the central bank and a third the chair of the board of the national oil company – until it went bust? ‘I will make no apologies for any of them,’ she says, after giving me a detailed explanation of why each was suited to the job. ‘I don’t have a long list of qualified people.’

Oldest Congo Town, Tubman Boulevard, Monrovia

Bitter leaf with fufu, chicken and dried

fish US $50

Pepper soup with fresh

fish and pig feet US $50

Check rice with fish and prawn US $50

Fufu and soup US $50

Hall rental US $100

But doesn’t it look terrible? ‘I trusted them. They had the skills. And I knew that they shared my values,’ she says, unrepentant.

Sirleaf has finished her food and turns down a second helping. The waitress, recovered from her ordeal, brings me sticky fried plantains. I’d like coffee, but none is offered.

Her presidency ends after next year’s election, but is she tempted to stay on? ‘Our constitution forbids it,’ she replies. That’s not been much

Terra Cotta Bar & Restaurant

Total (inc. tax) – US $321 (£220)

of an impediment for other African leaders, I say. ‘Our people wouldn’t take it. And my age wouldn’t allow it,’ she replies. ‘I think we’re ready for succession. We just must try to do it right.’

I end by asking about her autobiography. The title, This Child Will Be Great, doesn’t suggest disappointment with the outcome of her life. ‘When I was born, this old man went into the room where I was lying on the bed, and he just looked at me and said: “Oh, this child will be great,” ’ she says. ‘And so we all laughed about it and, over the years, with the ups and downs, we used to tease my mother and say: “That old man didn’t know what he was talking about.” ’ Then she adds, regretfully, of her mother’s death in the mid-1980s: ‘She didn’t live long enough to see it come to pass.’

She pauses. ‘Maybe he was a prophet. Because I’m confident that I’ve done a good job. I know that history will judge me the best president up until this point.’ Better than Samuel Doe and Charles Taylor, I tease. It’s hardly a high bar. She’s looking at me again with that piercing gaze. It’s hard to tell whether she’s annoyed or amused. Then she smiles at me indulgently. ‘That’s fair,’ she says.

Nigel Farage

‘For God’s sake, I am what I am’

By Henry Mance

N

igel Farage has an adjective for the good things in life: ‘proper’. Proper blokes, proper jobs, proper markets. And when we meet at The Lamb, a pub in London’s Leadenhall Market, he clearly is in the mood for a proper lunch. ‘Have we got an order in?’ the leader of the UK Independence Party exclaims within two minutes of our arrival. ‘A man could die of thirst in here.’

This was Farage’s local pub when he was a trader on the London Metal Exchange. When he started in the 1980s, the City was a fantastic gentlemen’s club. ‘Now it’s like being a battery chicken,’ he sighs.

Farage, in contrast, is a free-range bull. He once labelled the European Council president a ‘damp rag’, and said Britons should be ‘concerned if a group of Romanian people suddenly moved in next door’. Supporters call him the boss man; opponents call him a racist. He is, undoubtedly, Britain’s most effective Brussels-basher, the man without whom there would be no EU referendum in June.

U kip is the biggest new party to emerge in Britain since Labour a century ago. It won 3.8 million votes in last year’s general election, as many as the Scottish Nationalists and Liberal Democrats combined, and is likely to gain dozens of seats in local elections in May.

Yet as Farage jovially plunges into his pint of ale, there is a sense that he may be losing his touch. Academics argue that his rhetoric puts off the very moderates whose votes will decide the in/out referendum.

U kip has also slipped into civil war. Farage is not on speaking terms with its sole member of parliament, Douglas Carswell; critics say he is incapable of sharing the limelight. ‘The cult of personality is very strong,’ says one Ukipper. ‘They’d be better off ditching him,’ says a Tory MP.

Illustration by James Ferguson

An easy question to answer is, does Farage want a second pint? A harder one is, might he soon be as outdated as his overcoat?

We head outside, where Farage can smoke. The son of an alcoholic Kent stockbroker, he joined the City aged 18 from London’s prestigious Dulwich College, and then became convinced that Britain needed a more Eurosceptic party than the Conservatives. ‘I’d been predicting a commodity boom all through the 1990s. Politics took over and I bloody well missed it!’ he jokes.

A passer-by intercedes: ‘I thought it was a doppelgänger but it’s actually you!’ Farage is delighted. Voters yearn for a politician they’d like to have a beer with; finally here’s a politician who’d take up the offer. ‘Every pub’s a parliament!’ he enthuses.

The Lamb serves food but Farage, 52, has other plans. We walk down Cornhill to Simpson’s Tavern – London’s oldest surviving chophouse, where he has been a customer for more than 30 years. ‘Sadly, most of the waitresses have changed,’ he says.

Most of the waitresses have not changed, it seems. ‘Haven’t seen you here for a while, Nigel,’ says one, pouring him a pint before the door has shut behind me. I survey the clientele and conclude that there’s unlikely to be a queue for the women’s toilets. ‘I love it here,’ beams Farage.

We take our third pint to the courtyard. An hour gone, and the alcohol we’ve consumed is already half the recommended weekly limit. ‘I know. It’s just ludicrous,’ says Farage, resting on an old beer barrel, his mood livelier than his grey suit suggests. He reaches for his third cigarette. ‘They’ll be telling us this is bad for us next. They want to live for ever!’

I ask about his hobby: visiting first world war battlefields. Farage opens up. ‘Whenever I go there, I always think, what would I have done? If I was a 19-year-old, fresh out of college . . . would I have been a proper man or not?’

Our table is ready inside. We squeeze alongside each other on a wooden bench with our backs to the window. Farage orders the house speciality – stewed cheese – for both of us, and picks a bottle of wine. For me, this is now entering stag-party territory; for him, it’s little more than holy communion. ‘The thing we used to drink here was port,’ he says. ‘We’d all go back to work, all crimson. That’s just what we did! No one cared. I don’t drink port at all now, ever.’

What happened in the afternoons? ‘Chaos. Extraordinary. I remember

once there was a really big cock-up . . . I remember the boss saying, “So when did this happen?” “Half past four yesterday afternoon.” “Oh well, there we are then.” The boss accepted this!’

Farage is quick to depict politics as a sacrifice. ‘I’m a loopy optimist, aren’t I?’ he says. ‘I like to think I’ve changed the centre of gravity on lots of national debates. But there is no life at all – nothing.’ It would be even worse, he says, if he’d succeeded in his seventh attempt to enter parliament last year. ‘Can you imagine if I’d been elected to Westminster? I’d need to be there every day.’

He has four children, two with his second wife, Kirsten, who is German. In the 2000s, he twice had to remortgage his house in Kent. ‘My financial position is slightly better than it was, but for about 10 years it was pretty rough,’ he says. How is it better? ‘It just is. Slightly better. There we are,’ he says, drawing a boundary.

The cheese arrives, and Farage smears his white toast with sauce. ‘Yeah, mustard, yeah, lovely, proper job!’ he says, reaching for the Lea & Perrins. He is right – it’s wonderful. The wine, a fruity Bordeaux, is excellent too. I should visit the 1980s more often.

An old friend of Farage’s arrives at a neighbouring table and points at the paper napkin around Farage’s collar. ‘You must be meeting someone important if you’ve got that tucked in there!’ Farage laughs, carefree. ‘Is it a proper lunch, Kevin?’ he asks his friend. ‘No, we’ve got a meeting later,’ comes the reply. ‘They were the days, Kevin,’ says Farage, ‘they were the days.’

Accused of nostalgia, however, he turns serious. ‘The club was lovely, but the club wasn’t very efficient. It had to change. The sadness is – this is where I may be nostalgic – the people whose working lives are on computers, they’re not as fulfilling as working lives that are actually meeting people doing stuff.’

Farage orders the Edwardian pork chop, well done, with a sausage. ‘I can’t help it, I love pork chop.’ It’s my turn. ‘Lamb chops? Pork chops?’ Farage suggests. ‘Mixed grill?’ offers the waitress. I order goat’s cheese in filo pastry.

There is a pause while Farage’s ears relay the news to his brain. ‘What? No. They shouldn’t serve rubbish like that here. Goat’s cheese? I mean . . . Goat’s cheese?’ He turns to the waitress. ‘You can’t give him bloody goat’s cheese.’ I look up at her for sympathy; she looks back with

contempt. Farage continues: ‘You’re not a veggie, are you, or something like that? If you are, fine. But what on earth are you doing here, then?’

And for a brief moment I know how the Romanians must feel.

We move on to less controversial matters, such as the EU. Many of Europe’s other populist leaders – Italy’s Beppe Grillo, Greece’s Alexis Tsipras, even Hungary’s Viktor Orbán – are popular among young voters. Farage’s success has relied on the old.

I ask if his obsession with past wars informs his combative approach to Europe. He protests: ‘If things aren’t going swimmingly, there’s an argument for radical growth and reform.’

If you don’t like that line, he has others – and he delivers them brilliantly. ‘I love Europe! France is wonderful. It should be. We’ve subsidized it for 40 years.’ He croaks with laughter, and I find myself joining in.

‘For seven years, I had a business relationship in Milan, Milano,’ Farage continues. ‘Dealing with Italians, just, let me tell you . . . Are we the same? Good lord, no! That’s why Europe’s fun – it’s fun because it’s different. A political project that seeks to make it all the same – it’s ghastly.’

How would he have voted in Britain’s previous European referendum in 1975, had he been old enough? ‘I’d have voted “yes”,’ he says, citing the need to bring down tariff barriers.

What about trade now, I ask? Surely the UK wouldn’t be able to negotiate trade deals as easily if it left the EU ? ‘Iceland managed it!’ he shoots back. But on what terms? ‘They’re happy! Switzerland’s happy!’

Still, leaving the EU is hardly likely to answer the UK ’s problems, I say. ‘I’ve been quite clear: it’s not a silver bullet,’ he replies, arguing that Brexit will simply give Britain more control of its own affairs. But many of the things that vex U kip voters are trends beyond the gift of politicians – our future wages will depend more on automation than the EU. ‘My friend Jim Mellon has been telling me this for a couple of years,’ says Farage. ‘That robotics are way more advanced than people think, and that we’re going to have a massive social problem.’

I ask if he remembers any particular trades from his City days. He blusters for a while, concluding, ‘The great skill of investment is to know when the right time is to get out. Getting in’s easy.’

So when does he get out of U kip? ‘Good question. Well asked. Where’s my chop? I’m ravenous.’ Informed that a well- done chop takes

35 minutes, he decides that he needs a cigarette more than I need an answer.

Eventually the chef taps on the window – the chop is done. But Farage has been dragged away by his Nokia, bringing news of U kip in-fighting. He returns a few minutes later with a face like a National Front manifesto.

We sit down to our meal, and I gently ask if the party will really suspend Carswell, its only MP. ‘I don’t care,’ he says in a tone that indicates that he probably does. ‘The level of support I have within U kip is phenomenal. The fact that some people don’t like it – well, there you are.’

Farage’s voice is now a series of bangs, like books falling off a shelf. I ponder the obvious way to lighten the mood: pour him more wine. But when I ask if it’s true that he’s in favour of legalizing drugs, he still spies a trap. ‘This is the wrong time to ask me that question – we’ve got a referendum to fight. So you’re not going to get the answer you want,’ he says. ‘But if ever there was a subject that needed a genuine royal commission . . . this is the issue.’

Few of his supporters would agree with that, or with his fairly liberal view of gay marriage. ‘What you’re saying is I’m not a pigeonholed rightwing Tory. No. I’m more of an old liberal in some ways. I think the state should butt out,’ he says, his guard still up. ‘I’m not as easily pigeonholed as people would like.’

I try to keep pace on the wine, remembering that Farage once took two bottles of gin to an election debate at Methodist Central Hall. In such debates, he excels. Countering him with statistics rarely works. How can opponents beat him? ‘Try to make me angry.’

Right now his focus is on touring the country. ‘Most people in politics, they view the people as a slight inconvenience,’ Farage says. How does he persuade people? ‘You actually mustn’t try too hard with this stuff. The skill of this is to make people believe they’ve made their own minds up . . . If they ask you a question, that’s their flick switch.’ He stresses his reasonableness. ‘I’m not this wild-eyed populist that’s descended from the hills . . . I pick and choose what I do, what I say.’

Critics say his appeal is limited to those who are already converted. The thought riles him. ‘Am I a bit of a blokeish bloke? Yes. Should I change my image? This is what they tell me – these people who come in and want jobs. I should feminize.’ He’s enjoying himself again. ‘I mean,

for God’s sake. I am what I am.’ Fine – but was it really necessary, I ask, to compare the EU to a serial date rapist? ‘We can’t even tell a joke!’ he responds.

I ask if he’s a fan of that other embodiment of English nostalgia, the poet John Betjeman. His eyes widen with schoolboy enthusiasm. ‘Mega. Huge! I love Betjeman, I adore Betjeman, I’ve visited his grave several times.’ He recites a couplet about sportsman C. B. Fry, and eases himself back into tales of Dulwich College and the first world war.

Before the last general election, Farage vowed to resign as U kip leader if he failed to win a seat in parliament – then reversed course. Was the promise a mistake? ‘Of course.’ What will he do if he loses the referendum? ‘I haven’t got a clue,’ he says.

Arguably, he loses either way: if Britain votes to leave the EU, Boris Johnson takes the credit; if it remains a member, U kip crumbles. Farage demurs. ‘This is not a greasy pole for me,’ he says, before hinting at a broader programme of shaking up Westminster.

The Lamb

Leadenhall Market, London EC 3

Our meals have disappeared and I wonder if I’ve made it through to coffee. Farage looks at his watch. ‘Oooh, gosh,’ he exclaims, and I assume the double espresso will have to wait. He turns to a waitress. ‘That was amazing. We’ve got work to do. But we could do with a large port each before we go. Makes sense, doesn’t it?’ To him, at least.

Pint of ale x 4 £16

Simpson’s Tavern

38½ Cornhill, London EC 3

Pint of ale x 2 £9

Stewed cheese x 2 £9

Chump chop and sausage £16.60

Goat’s cheese in filo pastry £10

Side orders x 2 £8

Bottle of Château de Lugagnac 2012 £36

Large glass of port x 2 £17 Tip £12

Total (inc. ales at The Lamb) –  £133.60

The port arrives and we move into the following week’s alcohol allowance. I broach the subject of Enoch Powell, the previous bearer of the anti-immigrant flame, who warned of rivers of blood in 1968. Farage once drove him to an event. ‘Powell was

brilliant in so many ways – militarily, intellectually,’ he says. ‘I don’t want to be Enoch Powell, do I? I don’t want to be right, but get the politics of it badly wrong.’

Before we can finish our port, our host brings us a complimentary top-up. Farage is outside for another cigarette. He has a new set of admirers: the old boys’ rugby team from Dulwich College are drinking port from a silver ladle. Soon Farage has a ladle of port in one hand and his glass of port in the other.

It has started to rain but Farage isn’t quite finished. He leads me round the corner to admire the worn steps of London’s oldest coffee house, the Jamaica Wine House. We return to Simpson’s to fetch our coats. I reach into my pocket to find the remains of a Marks & Spencer bread roll that I had hoped would line my stomach.

‘I hope it was different to most FT lunches,’ says Farage affectionately, glowing with pride or port. ‘I must say goodbye to the bloody girls.’ He pops back inside, then strides off towards the City – enchanted by the past, borne back ceaselessly into the present.

Emmerson Mnangagwa ‘I’m not a crocodile’

By Alec Russell

Afew weeks ago – and less than a month into his new life as an ex- president – Robert Mugabe received a rather awkward telephone call. It was his protégé on the line.

Emmerson Mnangagwa, Zimbabwe’s new president, aka the Crocodile, had a quibble. He had just been asked to sign off on the passenger list for a state-funded flight the 93-year-old was planning to take to Singapore – the entourage was 38 strong – for the former leader of one of the world’s most indebted nations to go for a health check.

Mnangagwa, a careful man with the build of a prizefighter and the conversational precision of a lawyer, has reached the climax of a halfhour account of his 54-year relationship with the founding father of the nation.

‘I phoned back and said: “Chef, you are going for a medical check-up. Why do you want 38 people?” He said: “Emmerson, I don’t know that list. I know it’s myself, my wife and my family.” I said: “No. You know the new dispensation . . . it’s a leaner cabinet. That can’t be understood if you are going to go for a medical check-up with a big number.” He says: “Emmerson” –’ Mnangagwa pauses for comic effect – ‘He never says Mr President. He just calls me Emmerson.’

Mnangagwa sits back and laughs. It echoes around the grand thatched lodge where we are having a late lunch. Aides, security staff, join in enthusiastically. Sycophancy? A touch, maybe. If so, who could blame them? But it seems more than that: Zimbabweans are rather enjoying the freedom to joke in public about their long-time autocratic overlord.

The president recounts how an abashed Mugabe eventually reduced his entourage by nearly half, although he did end up taking a 767 to Singapore and back for just 22 people. Apparently the man whose economic mismanagement fuelled one of the worst cases of hyperinflation since the Weimar Republic rang from Singapore seeking a smaller plane for the

Illustration by James Ferguson